The present invention relates to methods for representing and recording personal judgments and more particularly, relates to a computerized system and method for representing and recording dynamic, relative judgments of physical or non-physical concepts in one or two dimensions.
Studies have been performed using cognitive mapping methods to assess a person""s conception of the perceived or ideal distances between actual or hypothetical physical objects, such as buildings on a campus or in a town, or the perceived glossiness of images in a photograph. These studies have been done both by physical manipulation of objects (photographic prints), as well as by using a computer system to record the location of objects placed by an individual in a grid appearing on a computer monitor. These studies and methods are described in various publications1, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Baird, J. C., Degerman, R., Paris, R. and Noma, E. (1972). Student planning of town configuration. Environment and Behavior, 4, 159-188. Nagy, A. N. and Baird, J. C. (1978). Children as environmental planners. Chapter in Altman, I. and Wohlwill, J. F. (Eds.) Children and the Environment, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 259-294. Baird, J. C. (1979). cognitive representation of spatial relations: I. Overview. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 90-91. Baird, J. C., Merrill, A. A. and Tannenbaum, J. (1979). Cognitive representation of spatial relations: II. A familiar environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 92-98. Merrill, A. A. and Baird, J. C. (1979). cognitive representation of spatial relations: III. A hypothetical environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 99-106. Engeldrum, P., and McNeill, G. (1985). some experiments on the perception of graininess in black and white prints. Journal of Image Science, 29, 18. Engeldrum, P. (1991). Print-Quality Requirements, Proceedings of SID, 32, 
One problem with the methods described in these publications is that they have only been used to scale judgments of objects that are naturally situated in a metric space (buildings) or of physical stimuli that are directly perceived by an observer (photographic prints). These methods are also limited in that they do not provide a precise measure of the rating assigned to each item, because the location of the item along the scale has an error bar equal to the width of the pictorial word or icon. These methods also are limited in that they do not allow for (e.g., in the case of prints), or have not recorded (e.g., in the case of computer methods) dynamic changes of judgments over time.
Accordingly, a computerized system and method is needed that represents and records the scale values resulting from the dynamic adjustment of the location of multiple concepts in one or two dimensions. A computerized system and method is also needed that allows the user""s judgment decisions to be evaluated continuously by recording the changes made in the user""s judgments over time.
To address the needs described above, a computerized system and method is provided for representing judgments of a user, for recording relative judgments in one or two dimensions, and for recording the judgment making process. In general, the computerized method displays multiple concept representations simultaneously, receives a user-manipulated adjustment to one or more of the concept representations to create a judgment representation, and records the judgment representation(s) and user-manipulated adjustment(s). The judgment representations and adjustments are preferably recorded continuously so that the judgment process can be reviewed and evaluated.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, the computerized method represents and records relative judgments within a physical context.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, the computerized method represents and records relative judgments along a one-dimensional scale.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the computerized method represents and records relative judgments along a two-dimensional scale.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the computerized method represents and records relative judgments using a polar coordinate scale.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the computerized method represents and records relative judgments by associating concepts without any physical context or scale.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, the computerized method represents and records relative judgments using the above methods together with a fixed resource technique.
The computerized system preferably implements the methods defined above using software and a computing device.